


Miserable Souvenirs

by yekaterina



Category: RuPaul's Drag Race RPF
Genre: F/F, Road Trip, it is in your self-interest to find a way to be very tender..., it's a mystery story, katya is trans and trixie is butch now isn't that nice, surrealism that is inherent in traveling across the weird USA, womanhood, women good
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-10-11
Updated: 2018-12-07
Packaged: 2019-07-28 14:37:24
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 16,161
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16243691
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/yekaterina/pseuds/yekaterina
Summary: Trixie has always had a painful down and out handsomeness, courtesy of a misfortune streak that is wide as the day is long. She makes it work for her though, she looks good dressed in black and her voice sounds the sweetest when she’s singing sad songs. And for someone as young as she is, she knows her way around a funeral, which is a rather morbid skill to have, but for Katya, especially in her current state— she’s perfect.(Katya and Trixie go on a post-funeral road trip in search of Katya's long-lost sister.)





	1. A Half-sister

**Author's Note:**

> i don't have a lot to preface this with, i just wanted to write a fic that was very plot-centric so here this is. drawing in big inspiration from some of my favorite films and television shows, so the allusions and references you may notice are intended!
> 
> i'm @iloveyouviolet on tumblr.

“He never told me he had another family.”

Katya sits, staring at nothing, in the same uncomfortable high back chair she used to as a child. Her uncle sits across from her at her father’s desk, head between the two black busts of Tchaikovsky and Mozart sitting on the desktop. He’s certainly the odd one out.

He’s wearing a track jacket to his brother’s repass. He wasn’t even at the funeral. Katya hates him. She’s hated him ever since he cheated on Aunt Hilda and sent the woman who acted as Katya’s mother into a depression that ended, so loudly, with a bang.

“Your mother didn’t know about it either,” Uncle Alexei says. “Just your father and me.”

Katya laughs. “You two always kept each other’s secrets so well.”

The funeral was cold, but Katya was and still is sweating under her dress, a long-sleeved V-neck ankle length number. She wears her mother’s crystal brooch at the base of the V, it almost matches her choker, and she holds a wool overcoat in her lap. She knows her legs are slimy underneath her nylons, her feet are disgusting, toes blistered, she hasn’t worn proper heels in so long. Trixie supported the Doc Martens option but the black Louboutin’s ultimately won out of a stomach-churning apprehension, as if her dead dad would’ve been offended if she didn’t look her _most-womanliest._

Aunt Hilda’s funeral was hot. Boston in the summer is hell, and it rained, turned everything murky and muddy. Today was dry. Sandpaper wind. Katya’s knuckles are split open from the weather and she slides one of the rings she’s wearing over a bleeding wound, again and again.

“Don’t be like that. You’re absorbing Svetlana’s part of the inheritance as well as your mother’s. You should rejoice.”

Uncle Alexei smokes a cigar as he talks, getting ash on mahogany wood. Katya watches the grey snowfall and grips her chair’s armrests so she doesn’t grab the cigar out of his leathery hand and mash it out between his eyebrows.

Katya scoffs. “I don’t want to absorb her part. Where is she?”

“It shouldn’t matter to you,” Uncle Alexei sighs. Katya notes his careful avoidance of referring to her by name; any name at all, neither given nor chosen. She grates her teeth.

“Where is she. Tell me.”

“We don’t know anymore,” Uncle Alexei casts his cold green eyes to the deadly quiet Nana Alla and Nana Darya standing to her right, as well as Lawyer Robert, who is folded up awkwardly in the matching chair to Katya's left. “Svetlana’s left a paper trail since she disappeared, but it’s been over two months since anything new has turned up, understand? She could be anywhere now. She may not even be in the country. She may not be alive.”

“I could find her,” Katya says, leaning forward.

Her uncle rubs his temple with his thumb. “We’ve been trying.”

“Not hard enough. I could do it.”

Dubious looks are passed around the room in silence. The emerald green walls and dark oak bookshelves stuffed with tomes of Russian literature are closing in on her, and the musky smell of the old Persian carpets under her feet is making her sick. Katya fidgets in her chair. She’s about to burst out of it, knock it over and storm out of the room in a blaze of fire.

“I could do it,” she repeats, angrier. “I’m an orphan now. The probability of me finding my long-lost sister just shot up exponentially. I’ll be on Good fucking Morning America.”

 

  

She walks out of the study and into the parlor. Trixie’s talking to Katya’s cousins by the now-empty dinner table, tie loosened and suit jacket unbuttoned, an adaptation to the more casual but still somber atmosphere.

Katya’s eyes are out of focus but she manages to hone in on her best friend. The tall woman nods sagely when one of the cousins tells her an anecdote about Pyotr and she makes them all laugh quietly when the more woe-begotten mourners are out of earshot.

Katya leans her weight back against the wall and closes her eyes, takes steadying breaths. She checks her watch, then drops the hand down to her side and spreads her fingers out on the wallpaper. The feeling of velvet washes over her frantic mind, soothing it, only somewhat.

She cranes her head to the side and meets Trixie’s eyes from across the room.

Trixie has always had a painful down and out handsomeness, courtesy of a misfortune streak that is wide as the day is long. She makes it work for her though, she looks good dressed in black and her voice sounds the sweetest when she’s singing sad songs. And for someone as young as she is, she knows her way around a funeral, which is a rather morbid skill to have, but for Katya, especially in her current state— she’s perfect.

Trixie ditches Katya’s cousins without a word and comes over to her, shielding Katya from everyone’s pitying glances.

She has a tiny smile and a big slice of chocolate cake for her. Katya hates chocolate, but her father loved it. Trixie shifts the plate of cake to one hand and squeezes Katya’s arm gently, thumb rubbing back and forth over the fabric of her dress sleeve.

“Hey. You’re almost home free, everyone’s gonna be out of here soon and then—”

“Trix," Katya breathes, so that her sentence dies early. "I have a sister. A half-sister. Her mother is in the Ukraine."

Trixie’s eyes go comically wide and she releases her. “Oh. Whoa. Wow. That’s… Wow.”

Katya appreciates that she opts not to judge whether this is good or bad. Trixie’s mouth hangs open for couple seconds too long but she swallows down whatever else she was going to say.

“You’re going to help me find her,” Katya takes the plate and fork from her and begins shoveling the cake into her mouth, not out of hunger, but out of a need to do something mindless. Her brain is vibrating in her skull and her heart is hammering in her chest.

Trixie whips her head around to look at the dreary sea of people, mistakenly and understandably thinking Katya means they’ll find her now.

“She’s not,” Katya starts, but her cheeks are stuffed. She swallows and frees a hand to tug on Trixie’s jacket sleeve, getting her to look back down at her. “She’s not here, dummy.”

“What? Where is she?”

“She’s M.I.A.,” Katya stabs at her slice of cake with each letter. Wedged in her armpit is a rubber-banded manila folder with every piece of information on Svetlana her family has ever possessed. She wiggles her chicken-winged arm to indicate the folder’s relevance. “Has been for three years.”

Trixie’s big brown eyes are boring into hers. Katya drops her fork into her plate with a pout.

“You think I’m crazy,” she says, watching Trixie scoop up a glob of chocolate icing Katya’s piled up in the plate with her finger. She sucks the icing off her fingernail and grins.

“I’ve always thought that,” Trixie says, then pinches Katya’s cheek. “When you say go, we'll go.”

 

 

Two days later Trixie is standing on the curb outside of her apartment. She’s in a pastel pink and teal ski jacket and blue jeans that are cut-off above her ankles so that they don’t cover the shaft of her black cowboy boots and the intricate patterns of silver piping that she is so proud of.

 _They’re the most expensive thing I own_ , Trixie had confessed to her the day she bought them, modeling them for her in Katya’s living room, _Do you like them, rich girl?_

Hanging around her neck is the chin strap she’s fashioned her black Stetson with so that the hat sits between her shoulder blades when it isn’t on top of her head, which is presently covered by a simple black trapper hat. She’s holding a red duffel bag and a beaten-up guitar case. A brown leather suitcase that isn’t covered in stickers from around the world sits by her foot.

Trixie ducks her head into the open passenger window and smiles at her. Katya turns down Björk on the stereo and smiles back, lowers her sunglasses to see more clearly Trixie’s pale face sweating in the afternoon sunshine.

“What did you do?” Trixie asks, not unkindly. She’s referring to the slouchy Mickey Mouse sweatshirt Trixie bought for her about a decade ago. She leans her guitar case against the car to point a finger. “Is he smoking?”

“I needed someone on my side,” Katya grins around a cigarette of her own and swipes her thumb over the cloth one embroidered over her belly. Trixie rolls her eyes and rounds the car to pop open the trunk.

Katya watches her in the side window, waiting as she deposits her duffel bag into the trunk before opening a backseat door to slide her suitcase in next to Katya’s. She arranges her guitar case over them, asks Katya if it’s blocking the rearview mirror. It isn’t. She plops down into the passenger seat and buckles up, looks over at Katya and blinks at her sleepily.

“I like the fringe,” Trixie yawns. She tugs on the red yarn dripping from Katya’s inner arms and her hips, and her eyes shoot up to the black pom-pom headband holding back Katya's long braids and she smiles again but makes no comment.

Since the funeral they’d been up late at night on the phone drafting a plan: hit all the places Svetlana's name (as well as her multiple aliases) has been documented in the last three years, talk to whoever remembers her, and track her down to wherever she is now.

It's a road trip because Katya hates flying. Trixie paid ahead on her rent for the month and is going to gig on the road to make up for the ones she canceled in town. Katya has nothing to fret over after getting Pearl to house and dog sit, so they're all set.

Katya goes over the penned out route on the map, parked at a gas station outside of Boston. Svetlana dropped off the radar in Salem, so they’re headed there before New York City, where they'll begin working geographically rather than chronologically. After New York City is Buffalo, then Cincinnati. They’ll start the second leg of the trip after a few days rest.

She's counting on unplanned locations to pop up upon investigation. Hopes for a detour that leads them right to her sister. She can't stop her leg from bouncing as she drives, can't stop chain-smoking and changing out cassette tapes midway through their opening songs.

Katya starts to defend herself when she senses Trixie is going to say something about her antics, but she looks over to see Trixie's fallen asleep.

 

 

Salem is far more exhausting than Katya had expected the first city on their list to be.

Their first stop is a police station where they learn nothing new. Katya updates the contact information on Svetlana's missing person record for the police from her uncle's landline to her cell phone. They leave after checking the jail cells that hold nothing but two bar-fighters from the night before. Katya designs a flyer at the local library while Trixie gets them coffee and lunch, and they walk out with one hundred copies to plaster everywhere they go. After the library, they visit the local news station, then head to the hotel Svetlana checked into.

The hotel, an appropriately Gothic retreat, has little to tell them, officially. Katya had suspected that would be a reoccurring trend at all the hotels they’ll be looking into, so she gives the bellboy on his smoke break a twenty to spill the details. The conversation ends when a minivan pulls up and releases a loud family of five.

They continue idling outside of the hotel after the bellboy goes inside, huddled together under the green awning. It's evening now, and they're watching the sun setting behind one of the churches in town. She'd want a picture of her and Trixie smiling in front of it if they were here for any other reason.

"Do you want to buy something neat while we're here?" Trixie asks, out of nowhere.

Katya looks over at her with bugged eyes, a little surprised at the notion. Trixie shrugs, hands stuffed in her jacket pockets, her cheeks pink and puffs of breath visible in the growing coldness. Trixie generates heat like a stove and Katya has poor circulation, but the former is the one shuffling her feet. Katya's feeling just fine, in her sweatshirt and thermal tights.

"A keepsake from the last known place my sister was seen," Katya states, more than questions. She plays with the end of one of her braids as she considers the idea. "That's dark."

At the Salem Witch Museum, Katya buys a pewter spoon for herself and a snowglobe for Trixie.

 

 

Her Lincoln Continental glides along pleasantly over I-95 while Trixie drives. Katya taps her cigarette into a drained slushie cup as she goes through the papers on her sister. Uncle Alexei handed the manila folder to her plain and unassuming, simply labeled, ‘ZAMOLODCHIKOVA, SVETLANA PETROVNA’. Katya’s since decorated it in abstract doodles she imagines Svetlana might enjoy.

“So our source says she was wearing…” Trixie glances over to her, waiting. The warm yellow light on Katya's half of the car halves Trixie's face, the rest lost to the darkness surrounding them. Her eyes are tired, and she's discarded her ski jacket and hats into the backseat.

Katya's done the same with her sweatshirt and the headband that was giving her a headache. She's due to take off her jelly shoes soon, after the next gas station stop, so that her toes are free to curl and uncurl on the plush car floor carpet.

“A black, choppy wig,” Katya supplies, looking down at the account she jotted down in the top bound spiral notebook she bought for this expedition. “Sunglasses. Grey pantsuit. Just one suitcase. Stayed for two nights. Ordered dessert from room service and they said she left the room a mess.”

“A black wig and sunglasses,” Trixie’s lips purse and she angles her head to the side in a gesture of doubt. “That’s so corny. You think that kid was lying to you?”

“Possibly,” Katya laughs. She runs her hand over Svetlana’s birth certificate. It’s coffee-stained and crumpled, as are half of the documents in the folder. She spent the rest of the funeral night after Trixie went home carefully slotting every paper into a clear slip. “But if she’s crazy enough to run around like this, I think it’s likely to be true. Hey, did I already tell you this? We were born on the same day, eight years apart.”

“You did,” Trixie says, smiling. She runs a hand through her hair, an overgrown crew cut that could use a hairbrush. “Pete’s always been a punctual guy, hasn’t he? The only time I ever got to karate early was when he was taking us.”

Katya closes the folder and stretches the rubber band around it, turns her head to look out her window to look at all the cars passing by on the interstate. “He loved it when you called him Pete. It made him feel All-American.”

“He was like my dad, you know,” Trixie fiddles with the radio and tunes it to a country station. A song Katya wouldn’t ever recognize is playing, but Trixie sings along thoughtlessly, under her breath. 

“I know,” Katya sucks in the last bit of tobacco her cigarette has to give her and blows out smoke through her nose, mashes the butt into the car's stuffed ashtray. She’s going to have to empty it out soon if the nose wrinkle Trixie is pulling is any sign. “My mom should've had you instead of me.”

Trixie snorts. “And that means, what? My mom having you? She would've had her hands full. You were so rambunctious. Always getting me into trouble along with you.”

Katya doesn't respond. She just lets the wheels rumbling underneath her send her into a light sleep.

 

 

They stop in Middletown for the night and check into a place called The Sea Shanty. Why such a place exists in a landlocked area of New York, Katya is too tired to truly question.

Katya comes out of the bathroom after a shower to see Trixie standing in the middle of the room. In Trixie’s hands is a large conch shell, creamy white and pink, near identical to the paintings of shells on the green plaster walls. Katya tightens the shoddy bathrobe’s belt around her waist and walks over to her, stands by while she turns it over in her big hands.

Trixie holds it up to her ear and closes her eyes. After a couple of seconds, she’s grinning stupidly, like the smooth pink insides of the shell is whispering sweet nothings to her.

“Does it sound like the ocean?” Katya asks, teasing.

“Don’t know. I’ve never been,” Trixie switches to the other ear, smile falling as her expression morphs into one of deep concentration. Katya chews on a grin, watching her. Trixie suddenly holds it out to her and she takes it with a _Thanks_ , even though it was obviously Trixie wanting it out of her hands rather than a real offering.

Katya listens to the rushing sound within the shell and is taken back to the beaches of Tybee Island, summer of ’72. Her mother was in yellow, hat lost to the ocean’s furious wind. They were collecting scallop shells together. Her mother opened her palms to display a small collection of them but curled her fingers to block Katya from adding in the ones she found by herself.

_“No, look, Mitya. See how mine are perfect? Throw yours back into the water. Find mama ones that aren’t broken.”_

Katya opens her eyes to Trixie being a few steps across the room, facing away from her and pulling her boots off. Trixie's repeating Katya's question back to her.

“No. Can we push the beds together?” Katya sets the shell down on the desk beside her hip as she leans against it. She checks her fingernails, frowns at all the fresh chips in the red polish.

Trixie chuckles and shakes her head. “You haven’t been fucked in days.”

“Shut up,” Katya laughs. She sets her hands in her lap she watches Trixie methodically undress and fold up her clothes on the bed. She’s left in a sports bra and thick cotton underwear. Katya averts her eyes when Trixie takes off the bra and underwear to put on a bathrobe of her own. “I meant like when we were kids.”

“Okay,” she agrees like Katya knew she would. Trixie leaves her to take a shower and Katya shoves the beds together, turns the television off when it gets too staticy to stand. There is a nicer place in town, there are nicer places in every town and city they're headed to, but everything about sleeping in luxury on a search for her disappeared sister felt disgusting.

Katya's setting her watch alarm for noon-thirty when the bathroom door opens, letting in a gust of steam. Trixie's wrapped in a towel and giving her a stern look, though its power is diminished by her wet hair sticking up in every direction, her face ruddy and shining.

“You're not sleeping in the shitty bathrobe," she says. Katya looks down at herself, sees she's forgotten to change out of it, that it's come undone. "Do you want one of my shirts to sleep in?" 


	2. Chicken Kiev

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A light snowfall has blanketed the world outside while they’ve been warming up. Strangers who watched them put up the flyers come up to their table in groups of twos and threes and wish them luck. She hasn't received a single call since they began their search, but she smiles and says thanks to the drowsy faces without a shred of doubt in her voice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> more of this! i finished this up quickly, so i figured why not go ahead and post it. this chapter was originally over 5k words long, so i divided it, which means chapter 3 will be coming sooner rather than later (this is a purposefully vague promise)!
> 
> thank you to everyone on tumblr and on here who showed me support for chapter 1. i especially want to thank campholmes, who is my go-to guy to talk fic. we're the last two people dancing at the party, brother! thank you for sending me your lovely vatya commission. consider this update a second thank you.
> 
> but seriously, i cannot recommend commissioning ellen enough. what i just read was mind-altering. [find the details here on how to commish my bro and support a good, gay cause.](https://ourladykatya.tumblr.com/post/178636450023/hello-you-may-know-me-from-tumblr-or-from-ao3-as)

The outside wall of Martina’s Wine & Spirits offers a long stretch of unblemished brick for the taking, so the start of their seventh day in New York City is spent taking as much of it as they can. Katya stands on the sidewalk, supervising Trixie as she covers the last flyer-sized gap.

Trixie is all the way up on the step ladder loaned to them by Miss Martina herself, who also gifted them two free bottles of Fernet-Branca.

"Good for the stomach," the elderly woman said, patting Trixie's with a strange but motherly fondness. Trixie had gone pink when Martina noted hers was soft and full, unlike most American girls the woman sees. "That's why you feed it your mother's meals! It is the true center of your body. Your heart listens to it," with a sad smile she added, "I hope you find your sister. I'll be praying for you."

St. Mark’s place is sleepy, this early on a Sunday. The street is hungover after what was evidently a Saturday-night filth parade in the rain through East Village. Beer bottles, condoms, and other modes of trash litter the sidewalk. Crumpled streamers hang and flutter in the barren street trees and run along the curbs in a random blend of watered down colors that don’t tell her anything about what was celebrated.

Chinese Year New maybe, but that also might not be for a week or two. She should really come here more, and to Greenwich, when she's in the city. That is, on different, cheerier terms of visitation. She'd want to rope Trixie along with her, anyhow. She could take her to see all the sights.

The areas they've checked out so far aren't Big Apple hot spots. No Times Square or Statue of Liberty, just police departments and news stations, hospitals, hotels, and homeless shelters. She supposes Central Park and Broadway counts. In lieu of tour guides, they heard from buskers and hustlers.

They did, however, pay a special visit to the Ukrainian Museum, in the hopes that Svetlana is a recurring visitor, as New York is one of her most frequented cities. But no dice. Ukrainian delis and restaurants were fruitless too, but those visits were more about manipulating ethnic pride to drum up support for the search of an Eastern European woman in America, two months after the fall of the Berlin Wall.

Trixie tears a piece of duct tape off the roll and the _riiip_ is loud, no people around to drown it out. Katya places her hand on her belly and tries to recall the last meal her mother made her. It had to be when she was a child, before they hired a cook. Chicken Kiev, perhaps. Or a TV dinner.

It isn't productive thinking, but she's been more productive this month than she has been in some time. And regarding the flyers, she finished putting up her half several minutes ago, but Trixie is more careful and her half of the batch is all level—

So, Katya waits, quiet and refusing herself a cigarette, her efforts to let Trixie concentrate on being precise.

The precision reminds her of red roses arranged in a perfect heart on her aunt's fresh grave when Katya's hands were not up for the task of being steady, and the hidden thorn that sunk into Trixie's palm dead-center as if she intended that to happen. She plucked it out without the thorn breaking. It would've for Katya. She didn't question Katya when she took it as a token.

She's never been one to probe Katya's idiosyncrasies. But deep in the eponymous yellow and green woods of Forest Hills Cemetary, under the watchful eye of a white marble angel with her wings spread, Trixie did ask her a doubtful, "Do you want to go to dinner at your uncle's?"

They were holding hands and Trixie had an umbrella above their heads. Her hair was longer back then, a shaggy mop that she slicked back to look nice for the funeral. Strands of sweaty hair had fallen in her face, pomade washed out in the rain. Katya's make-up was ruined. Her car coat was as soaked as Trixie's gas station jacket, the only black one she had at the time. She has many black jackets now.

"No, I don't. But it's what my family does," Katya said. A bird flew over the angel's head and took refuge from the rain under the awning of a nearby tomb. The wind blew mist this way and that, sifted through the trees and kicked up the endless patchwork bedspread of dead leaves on the ground. "It's nice here. She would've liked it... A quiet spot. I can't believe they buried her in blue, she hated blue. God, I fuckin' hate them."

Katya knew the other funeralgoers, including her father and her uncle, were congregating outside of the forest, filing into their cars. The hearse driver was leaning against his, smoking, the job done, while they buried his former passenger. She'd wondered how much he got paid, how much he'd sell the hearse for. She'd just gotten her driver's license.

"You don't have to go, not if it would make you unhappy," Trixie's voice took on that urgent manner she's still susceptible to. Her obliviousness to Katya's family dynamics was endearing to Katya at the time and she let herself be convinced that Trixie was right.

They ate pizza and ice cream in a booth at a Howard Johnson's, Trixie in her brother's hand-me-down black suit, Katya in the vintage Victorian mourning dress her aunt bought her as a birthday gift the year before. She still has it, styled on a mannequin in her attic. A strawberry ice cream stain is on the bodice.

A street vendor was selling strawberry ice cream to a mother of two children yesterday in the Park. A blonde boy and girl. Twins, it looked like.

Rows upon rows of her sister's smiling face are staring at her. She wonders what Svetlana was doing the day of Aunt Hilda's funeral, what she is doing this morning. Katya hopes she is warm. Wherever she is. Katya's nose is runny and she holds Trixie's buffalo check sherpa coat tighter around herself. Trixie's in her ski jacket, wool gloves tucked into her back pockets.

Trixie lets out a triumphant shout that echoes down the street. The sound doesn't sync up with the exhausted expression she reveals upon twisting around. It shifts quickly; not quick enough. She has a closed-mouth smile for Katya to make up for the fact, suggesting that she should be appalled at Trixie for not being wholly selfless for one fleeting second of her life.

Katya has the urge to put her to bed, let her rest, take a break from being part of the chaos that is _her_ life.

Trixie gazes skyward, then down at Katya, eyes watery from the winter wind. “How’s it look from there?”

“It’s almost a mural!” Katya calls up to her. "Great work. You can come down now. Please be careful!"

Trixie tugs a short length of tape from the roll and bites down as she descends the ladder. Katya gives her a little bit of shit for not tossing it down, but she is grateful both hands are on the ladder until her feet hit the ground. Trixie backs up to stand next to her and tilts her head side to side in consideration of their work. 

Katya pulls the tape out of her mouth for her and stuffs it into her shoulder bag. It's the second roll they've used. They'll need to buy a roll in bulk at the rate they're burning through them. 

“Don't sell us short, it is definitely a mural,” Trixie says. She cups her palms in front of her face and blows hot air into the pocket. Her fingers must be freezing without her gloves on. “Phew. And now that we’ve established that, let’s go someplace warm.”

 

 

Inside a café across the street from Martina’s, Katya sips on a cappuccino and downs a bowl of hot oatmeal as she reads The Village Voice. Trixie’s dually chewing on toast with grape jelly and a plate of assorted fruits. She's drained her black coffee and she is staring out the frosted window— has been for some odd minutes. Nothing of interest is out there.

A light snowfall has blanketed the world outside while they’ve been warming up. Strangers who watched them put up the flyers come up to their table in groups of twos and threes and wish them luck. She hasn't received a single call since they began their search, but she smiles and says thanks to the drowsy faces without a shred of doubt in her voice.

Tending to their stomachs leaves little room for discussion, so neither of them tries to say anything. Nondescript jazz is playing on a record player until an exasperated barista changes the record to Morrissey's solo debut. It's two songs in before an even more exasperated barista puts on Gang Starr and Katya wants to leave the girl a tip for saving her ears.

The café is quaint and naturally devoid of the Red Sox memorabilia that decorates her favorite spot for coffee back home. It's filled up more since Katya and Trixie came in, primarily with college kids in not-warm-enough flannel shirts who tack up concert flyers by the door on their way out. There is an old man sitting in the corner by the bookshelf stuffed with American Classics. A dozing Husky lies on the blue tile floor by his feet. The old man scratches his dog's head every so often, between bites of an orange and page-turns of a falling-apart novel.

Katya can feel the energy bubbling up in Trixie across from her in their drawn-out silence, can hear it in her foot beginning to tap nonstop beside Katya's underneath the table. It is a matter of seconds before she decides to come out with what's on her mind. Katya looks up from the newspaper, expectant.

“This whole thing is weird," Trixie says, right on cue. A large bite of toast muffles her words and she swallows it down. "The weirdest part is that even after Svetlana went missing, your pops kept you from finding out about her. How do you keep a missing person's case a secret? And why? Why would you do that?"

She pauses her out loud wondering as if to say: _Answer my rhetorical question_. Katya takes another sip of her cappuccino instead. In turn, Trixie takes another bite of fruit, her way of wetting her mouth.

"Wouldn't you want it all over the news? And it’s been three years. You'd think with your family's money and connections, it'd be a snap," Trixie emphasizes this with a rough one, her fingertips dry from the cold and the skin still pink. "Get the FBI involved, or something. Nationwide search parties. How could they have all that stuff on her, that whole info-dump you got in your bag there, but they didn't find her? She’s still… _Out there_.”

“Trixie, the fact that my uncle was involved in this should tell you everything,” Katya replies briskly. “It’s a manner of keeping up appearances. I don’t doubt that he found ways to persuade officials to loosen up on the search. Svetlana is a terrible family secret and she just up and vanished on her own. Why try to bring her back into their lives?”

Trixie recoils in her seat. “He's an asshole, but you really think Alexei would go that far? And your dad? You think Pete would've done that?”

Katya doesn't have the heart to tarnish the fond memories Trixie has of Pyotr. She fiddles with the top right corner of the newspaper, folding and unfolding.

“She’s my father’s bastard.”

Trixie hums, understanding. “The family disgrace."

“And I thought I held that title,” Katya smirks against the rim of her mug. It falls when she sets it down on the table without taking a drink. Her lips are perfectly printed in lipstick on the white ceramic. “I don’t like talking about her like this. It’s not like I know her well enough. I don’t even know her at all. There’s so that much the folder doesn't say.”

Trixie agrees. Katya loses interest in the newspaper and drops her right hand onto the table palm-up. It is her turn to gaze out the window. She's brought back to the world when Trixie takes to tracing a finger over the lines of the black ink eye on Katya’s wrist.

“Kat, remember Shea’s birthday party in second grade? Everyone else was asleep," she drifts off, warmth in the pause. "But we stayed up all night playing with her dolls. I was Ken and you were Barbie?”

“Yeah?” Katya grins, “We kissed and you said my mouth tasted funny and kissed my elbow instead. What made you think of that?”

“Dunno. Just did," Trixie says. She stands, hooks her thumbs under the suspenders holding up her pants. They're a darker shade of jean than her shirt. "I’m gonna use the telephone here. Find a bar to play at.”

“Oh! Find somewhere close to the hotel,” Katya says, touching Trixie's hip before she passes by her. “I wanna get drunk tonight.”

“I’ll make sure to prioritize that, darling.”

Katya smiles sweetly at her and gives her ass a pat. Trixie disappears into the hallway where a payphone is framed between the janitor closet and the bathroom.

She pushes up her sweater sleeve to check her watch. They've spent a half hour in here. They only have a few places of interest left and then tomorrow they start over again in Buffalo. Katya hates having to move swiftly about this. She wants to scour every inch of every city, but Trixie can't be away from Boston that long, she needs to get back to her job of writing hits for Nashville royalty, and Katya doesn't want to be alone, or worse, do this with someone else.

Thinking about the one measly day in Salem churns her stomach, but there wasn't enough to go on to stay longer. Katya sighs through her nose and flips the newspaper from the films section to politics. The contents make her stomach churning continue, so she looks up to the window.

There is a woman standing on the sidewalk across the street, facing the mural. Katya considers her for a prolonged moment before returning her attention to the paper, scanning through the latest on Bush's nonsense. Her left hand blindly gropes the table to find her pewter spoon. She drops it into her near-empty mug, swirling brownish froth around in restless circles.

Katya looks up at the window again and the woman is still fixated on the wall, closer to it now. The white noise inside the café is washed out as blood pumps in Katya's ears louder and louder.

She scoots her chair back, slings her borrowed coat around her shoulders, and stumbles in her clunky Moon Boots as she maneuvers around scattered tables and armchairs. Katya bursts out the door, squirming through the gap between a snow-dusted couple on their way in.

Katya calls out to the woman, but there is no response. Katya starts across the street, jumping back onto the sidewalk when a car turns the corner and almost hits her. The loud honk gets the woman's attention and she jumps in place. Katya calls out to her again, a simple "Hey!", because her mind is in a wild spin and her throat is closing.

The woman turns to face Katya, but her face is half covered by a Burberry scarf, whatever hair she has covered by the hood of her coat. In fact, her whole body is covered up, wrapped up in a grey overcoat and brown fur boots. Katya crosses the street and takes step towards her, but she begins taking steps backward, before turning and running away.

Katya stays rooted to her spot far longer than she means to. She means to run after the woman, but her legs won't move.

Suddenly fingers are cupping her elbow and Katya turns around in a shuffle, snow crunching under her boots. It's Trixie. Her mouth is moving, shaping out Katya's name, but she can't focus on a singular sound for a good handful of seconds. A soft deepness slowly creeps into her ears and Katya eventually registers it as Trixie's voice. She is able to root herself and she grips Trixie's shirt in her hands.

Snow is swirling around them. She is reminded of Trixie's distorted smile when Katya first held the Salem snowglobe in front of her face in the gift shop. Trixie isn't smiling at present.

“Katya? What happened?”

Katya swallows. “There was a woman staring at the mural. And she ran away when I approached her.”

“You think it was her?” Trixie asks, deadly serious. “Svetlana? Did it look like her?”

Katya drops her head into Trixie's chest. “I don’t know. I don’t know, I didn’t see her face.”

“Maybe she was just some lady freaked out by seeing all those posters,” Trixie suggests. “She was just probably freaked out. Breathe, Katya, do that for me.”

Katya realizes her heartbeat is an erratic mess against the quick but still steady thump of Trixie's. She does as she's told and pulls away for some air, still gripping onto Trixie's shirt in balled-up fists. Snow gathers in minuscule clumps on Trixie's eyelashes, on her head of hair, on the top arch of her big, reddening ears. Katya watches their breaths intermingle until they come out in matching, even puffs.

“Do you think it was her?” Katya asks, hopeful. Trixie's face tightens. Katya knew the answer before she even asked. She wrings the worn jean material in her hands before she sinks against Trixie again and allows herself to be surrounded by the broad embrace of her arms.

“No,” she says it quickly, firm. Though it crushes Katya’s insides, it is reassuring to hear her be so sure. Katya nods into her chest, rubs her wet eyes against Trixie’s shirt, staining it with her makeup. She knows Trixie will say nothing of it.

“No," Katya sighs. "You're right."

They stay like that until the snow really starts to fall. Trixie pries her off enough to lift Katya's chin up and brush a thumb over her cheek.

“Let’s go see a movie. _Misery_ is still out, right? You said you wanted to see that. Let’s go see _Misery_ , that’ll cheer you up.”

Katya has to laugh at the irony. “Okay. Go get your jacket, you idiot. You’re shivering.”

 

 

After the movie, Trixie insists Katya stay in the hotel for the night. Katya only complies because she truly is exhausted, from her head to her toes. Hours into a deep slumber, plagued by dreams of a Cape Cod ghost town and an apocalyptic Martha's Vineyard, she is awoken by their hotel room door creaking open.

Katya shifts under the scratchy sheets and peeks through her curtain of mussed, knotty hair. Trixie is back from the bar, stinking somewhat of booze but mostly of sweat. Stage lights have never been easy on her.

She sets her guitar case against the dresser and is shrugging out of her jacket, the material shiny from melted snow. She stumbles around and mutters a curse in response to a loud scrape of her boot against the cheap carpet.

"Trix," Katya croaks, lifting her head from her pile of pillows. After Trixie left the hotel Katya asked housekeeping for more, so she could have a mountain behind her head. And still, she took half of the pair from Trixie's side of the one bed. She took one of her big t-shirts to sleep in as well. What fits Trixie snugly fits Katya like a dress and it is something she appreciates deeply.

Trixie's dark eyes widen in the low-light courtesy of the open bathroom door. It is clear she was doing her half-drunken best not to disturb the sleeping beauty.

"Aw. Sorry to wake you," Trixie whispers. She's pulling her suspenders off of her shoulders. "Been asleep long, huh?"

"I don't mind," Katya makes a grabby hand at her. "C'mere."

"I smell like a bar, I'm gonna take shower."

Katya is bleary-eyed, but she finds it in her to glare. "Come. Here."

Trixie chuckles under her breath and raises her hands in defeat. She strips down to her undershirt and underwear. She's wearing soft cotton boxers, and wore no bra at all today; her small breasts afford her the luxury of doing so when she pleases. Katya does not share that experience, as she paid the big bucks for big tits.

Trixie leaves on the thick wool socks she's been wearing in response to the lack of warmth provided by her shoes. She slips into bed and Katya drags her toes across the soft texture warmed up by Trixie's feet, then over her hairy ankle. Trixie drapes an arm over Katya without her having to ask and rubs her head into her one pillow, no complaints from her. She's worn out.

"You have something on your face."

Trixie stirs, already having fallen asleep. "Hm?"

Katya pokes a finger into her cheek, where a black lipstick stain smears across it and down to her jawline. 

"It's not like to you love 'em and leave 'em," Katya whispers. "Do you even remember her name?"

Trixie huffs a laugh, rubs her thumb over Katya's sleep-hot hip. "Don't worry about it, mom."

She drifts off again and Katya's following behind when a phone rings. The ringing doesn't sound like the hotel room's phone. It sounds like hers.

Trixie picks up her head and mumbles Katya's name as a question. She doesn't get an answer. Katya's sat up all the way, razor-straight, staring at her purse. A hand on her lower back nudges her forward and she’s out of bed and on the phone in seconds.

“Hello?” Katya breathes. She looks over her shoulder. Trixie’s rubbing her eyes with the heels of her palms, humming unpleasantly, but she's kicking the sheets off of her long legs.

“Hi, is this the number for the missing woman named Svetlana?” It’s an older woman’s voice, wide-awake. Doesn't sound like a prank call, but doesn't sound like an authority figure either. Katya's mind goes back to the café, trying to remember the faces of those who wished her good luck.

“Yes,” Katya sighs. Trixie’s standing behind her now, ear pressed against the outside of Katya's brick phone to listen in. “Yes. This is her sister, Katya. Who is calling?”

“Tabitha Brown, of Brown’s Buffalo Town Antiquity Parlor. I went to see Fiddler on the Roof on Broadway tonight and I saw your signs. Yeah. Very disturbing. Your sister came to my store some time ago. That’s right. She said some odd things to me. Sold me even odder things. I still have a few. I think you should see them, Katya.”


	3. It was Wrinkled

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Trixie’s finger is bandaged, not in a simple Band-Aid that would have been suffice, but in tubular gauze. She keeps twisting her wrist to survey it, wounded finger poised in the air. Katya leans over and kisses it. The scratch of rough gauze tickles her top lip and Katya swipes a finger over her mouth to overlay the sensation. Trixie watches her the entire time, amused, before she gazes back down at her finger with newfound interest.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> it's Tender Time !
> 
> i had way over 4k for this chapter, so i'm leaving it on a slight cliffhanger again. enjoy :)

They’re seated in a tiny, empty-but-for-them diner next to a gas station. Trixie is eating veggie soup and Katya is dumping a sugar shaker into her coffee as she scribbles today's goals in her notebook. She’s taken to writing in big letters. Filling more pages than necessary in her pretty cursive slant makes her feel, on a superficial level, that they are doing better than they actually are.

“What do we have so far, Kat?” Trixie asks. It's the first thing either of them have said since the waitress came back with their orders, so she sets down her pen and flips through the pages.

“The bellhop in Salem introduced the idea that she stays in a hotel for one to two days and basically trashes her room. The hotels in NYC established that trend without a doubt. She orders dessert from room service and that’s it. Whatever is on the menu that is chocolate is what she gets. Her aliases are always some sort of Slavic name, usually with the same initials as her real name and…”

Katya drifts off. The words are blurring together, morphing into black and blue hieroglyphics. Trixie murmurs her encouragement to continue around the spoon she’s sucking on but Katya doesn't go on, so she pulls it out of her mouth.

“We’re discovering patterns just like you said we would.”

“Not fast enough," Katya starts pulling on the elbows of her red blazer. Her knit scarf and green plaid overcoat are laid over her side of their booth. She dressed up for their meeting with Tabitha, spent extra time on her makeup too. Trixie helped by braiding her hair while she put on her white eyeshadow. 

“We've got a ways to go, alright?" Trixie's eyes turn fervent, holding her too tightly for her to look away. "Don’t pressure yourself.”

“She’s running from something. Why else would she hop around from place to place? And wear disguises? And why else would she freak out in her hotel rooms? She didn’t run away on a whim or after a meltdown or whatever. Her being crazy isn't what is happening here. Somebody is after her. She’s scared. She’s scared and I can’t help her.”

“We don’t know that,” Trixie’s tone is calm, an adversary to Katya's frantic rambling. It's the same tone she's been using to sing Katya to sleep the nights she lies fretfully awake in bed.

She gently pulls Katya’s fingers away from her mouth after she chews on her nails a second too long to be able to stop herself. Katya ignores her as she wipes clean a bleeding hangnail for her with a napkin from the dispenser. Trixie crumples it up on the table, drops it into the space between them. She continues eating.

Something sets off in Katya when Trixie bites into a sweet potato and she slaps her palms down on the table, rattling the glassware. Trixie freezes, holding her spoon in mid-air, eyes wide.

“We don’t know anything! This is stupid. It’s a wild goose chase. A woman’s fucking dessert order isn’t going to tell me if she’s here or there or dead or alive!”

She’s almost shouting, but the one waitress working the diner isn’t paying any attention. Trixie is frowning but doesn’t engage her. Katya crosses her arms and sits back in the booth, having leaned across it to get right in Trixie’s face. She could smell her own perfume on her and she wonders when it rubbed off on Trixie's clothes.

Quiet minutes go by. It isn’t one of their comfortable silences. She tries to finish her coffee but it tastes like guilt. Trixie doesn't finish her dinner.

“I’m sorry,” Katya breathes, meaning it deeply. "I'm not mad at you. I shouldn't have done that."

“I know you're not mad at me. I'm not mad at you either,” Trixie says. Katya wants to hug her. She taps the page Katya was on with a finger. “You didn’t finish reading. And what else?”

Katya curls her pinky around Trixie's finger to move it away and she slaps the notebook shut. “And I have to pee!”

She leaves a credit card behind for Trixie to pay. She consoles herself in the gas station’s grimy bathroom so that her hands are steady enough to reapply her brown lipstick. She comes out and sees Trixie through the front windows, filling the car up with gas.

Katya wanders through the gas station, weighing the options of candy bars or rice cakes, ice cream or yogurt. She decides on a to-go cup of cereal and heads to the fridges for milk. What she finds is a fridge of milk cartons covered in tiny missing child posters, the images are grainy, black and white.

There are so many of them. Kids from ages 5 to 17, from all over the country, cheery smiles for what they thought would only ever be their school pictures. She doesn't realize she's been staring until Trixie is beside her with a handful of cheese sticks.

Trixie looks between her and the milk carton kids but leaves it up to her, whether or not they address the elephant in the room. Katya appreciates the gesture. She grabs a small carton of soy milk because it has a soy bean on the front and not a picture of a little girl named Beverly. She finds her voice after reading through the nutrition facts twice.

“Whatever happens, when we get home, I’m starting an organization. For missing people, finding them, supporting those affected. With a focus on cases like ours. The really... Odd ones.”

Trixie is looking at her proudly and the guilt in her stomach subsides, replaced by a swell of calmness.

“That’s terrific, Katya. You'll help so many people.”

“Thank you,” she says. Katya presses a hand against the flat part of Trixie's chest beneath her collarbone and rubs to feel her warmth before they have to go back out in the harsh cold. “For putting up with me. For everything.”

Trixie smiles. She doesn’t point out that Katya's thanked her multiple times every day of this trip, though Katya can see it in her eyes that she’s been keeping a tally.

“Thank you for being here with me," Katya adds, because she can't help it. She tugs on her collar twice to let her know they can be playful again, after what happened in the diner. Trixie laughs softly.

“In a Circle K outside of Buffalo? Oh, baby, I wouldn’t want to be anywhere else in the world. The price on these bad boys is a steal.”

Trixie's shaking her chosen snacks in the air. She gives Katya a chaste kiss on her hairline and sweeps past her to pay for the cheese sticks and Katya's Froot Loops. At the last minute, Katya adds Camels and peppermint gum to their purchase, but Trixie doesn't complain.

 

 

Tabitha Brown resides in a suburban neighborhood that resembles one of those miniature village sets sold during Christmastime. It possesses a nurturing idyllic-ness rather than a sickening one, unlike the neighborhood Katya grew up in. The one-story homes are cozy and they operate in a pattern of red, navy, green, and brick, then the pattern repeats.

"It's a winter wonderland," Trixie says, the moment they step out of the car. Buffalo's snow is thicker than it was in New York City and it is pristine white. Untouched. Katya sinks into it and is subject to Trixie's laughter, then to her helping hands. One of Katya's red pom pom earrings got caught in her hair while she slept on the drive. She waits while Trixie untangles it for her.

It is quiet out here. No children are out playing under the muted sun. Snow-coated cars are parked in the driveways, families are inside where it is nice and warm. Almost every house's frosted windows are lit up yellow from within. Smoke wiggles up out of the chimneys.

"That house across the street reminds me of your grandpa's, that one down there, with the great big tree and the tire swing? It looks like it."

Trixie stills her hands to give the red-paneled house a thoughtful gander. The tire swing rocks back and forth in the lazy evening breeze, snow crumbling out of the hole. Her grandpa's house didn't have a tire swing, but an outhouse in the woods that surrounded the red log cabin.

Katya knows this because Trixie used to go back to Wisconsin for a week in the summer and bring back pictures of what had changed and what hadn't. Usually, it was the latter. It's a weak comparison, really, but she can't fight the compulsion to make Trixie feel at home when she looks so out of place.

"Yeah, I see it," Trixie says. She plays with Katya's hair after fixing the earring, smooths down her bangs. "There we go. You're presentable now."

Katya flips her off and pulls her towards Tabitha's house. In the yard there are dead sunflowers and basil plants, most of the leaves picked until barren, but blackened ones remain. The house is a brick colonial, adorned with orange shudders and a green door. A wooden swing on the porch holds empty plant pots and a broken plastic bird feeder. They stand on a doormat that reads, ' _Hello, From the Other Side..._ '

“You sure about this?” Trixie asks. This morning she went to their hotel's concierge to find out if Brown’s Buffalo Town Antiquity Parlor actually exists. Though the business listing was found online, she came back to their room doubtful. It's still apparent in her voice.

Katya squares her shoulders and adjusts the strap of her shoulder bag. "Yes."

“Okay. If she tries anything nuts, I’ll distract her. You just get the hell out.”

Katya ignores her worrying and pushes the doorbell. A few moments later, the door bursts open, revealing a woman of little height that is made up for by the volume of her teased red hair. A black eyepatch is over her left eye. She is wearing a blue prairie dress with a tan waistcoat over it that has a Mexican flag patch on the right breast.

“Salutations!” the woman greets warmly. “Are you Katya? Oh, it must be you. You look like  _her_. Tabitha Brown, of Brown’s Buffalo Town Antiquity Parlor. Come in, come in, it’s so cold out. Oh, there’s two of you. Hello.”

They take off their coats in the entry hallway and Tabitha hangs them up on bird-shaped hooks sticking out of the wood-paneled wall. Tabitha moves ahead while they take off their shoes and she calls out from a room on the right side of the hall that she's in the kitchen.

Trixie gets her boots off first and starts to walk away, but Katya holds her back by the shirt sleeve, steadying herself so she can squirm out of her other boot. Trixie's shirt has a kitschy landscape on the front: a pair of ducks sitting on a lake, trees in the background. Her collar is creased and sticking up. Katya kicks her boots aside and stands on her tiptoes to fold the collar down and smooth it over.

"It was wrinkled," Katya explains herself. Trixie hadn't said anything. She fastens the two buttons of the shirt as well, tugs her shirt sleeves down so they're not bunched above the elbow. Her hands roam across Trixie's shoulders in search of another thing to sort out, but Trixie cuts her off by smiling sweetly and thanking her. Katya mumbles something about being _Presentable_ and she lets Trixie pull her into the kitchen.

It smells like cookies baking. The wallpaper is a kitschy, floral design. In fact, the entire kitchen, and probably the entire house, is kitschy. Memories of Trixie's mom's house pop up in her mind and this time the connection is genuine. She refrains from voicing this.

Soul music is coming from another room. It would seem nobody else is home, but the woman's lively energy fills the room as she flits around, tidying it up, gathering books and envelopes to stow away in a floor cabinet.

Tabitha asks what kind of tea she prefers. Upon getting Katya's answer she apologizes for not having Earl Grey and starts whipping up what looks to be homemade tea. Trixie leans back against a counter and Katya situates herself beside her.

To their left is a circular table with three chairs surrounding it and a green velvet tablecloth is draped over it. An open bag of balloons is on the table and yellow and red balloons have floated up to the low ceiling. A yellow domed cake plate is the table's centerpiece.

“Thank you for calling, Tabitha,” Katya says. She scans the room, searching for an ashtray. There isn't one. She stuffs a stick of gum in her mouth and wordlessly gives a stick to Trixie.

“You’re welcome. Call me Tammie. And you are in fact Katya, right?” Tammie zeroes in on Trixie. “And you, tall woman? What is your name?”

“Trixie,” she says with a kind laugh, taking an extended step to shake her hand. Tammie gives her an eager shake and returns to the kettle on the stove. Trixie returns to Katya’s side.

“Nice to meet you, Katya and Trixie,” she pauses, thinking it over. “Well, no it’s not, because of the circumstances. In a different world, we would’ve met over continental breakfast at a Holiday Inn Express. The one here in town is nice, I stay there sometimes.”

Katya glances sidelong at Trixie and can see that she's just as fascinated with the peculiar-mannered woman.

“You two came from the city? You know, in nineteen sixty-six, New York City had a smog catastrophe. Two hundred or so people died. Yeah. It was snowing ash. They cleaned it up, but then came the Ozone layer hole, and now there's air pollution everywhere,” Tammie blinks twice. “But Buffalo is nice, don’t you agree? Snow is real here.”

She escorts them into the living room. A large seal that reads 'Buffalo Ornithological Society' hangs on the wall that is uninterrupted by windows. The seal is surrounded by various paintings of birds and whales and landscapes that also decorate the other three walls. The floor is a light wood, but Mexican textiles conceal it for the most part. The rugs are soft under Katya's socked feet.

The music she heard in the kitchen turns out to be a Tina Turner record that is crackling on what looks like a gramophone from the twenties. Katya idly thumbs through the album collection in a rack beside it. But the most eye-catching piece in the room is a golden standing birdcage. Trixie goes over to the cage and peers down at the bird inside. It is of small height, with grey feathers and an orangeish crest. Katya looks at it from afar, uninterested.

“Bombycilla garrulus," Tammie says, fluffing the pillows on a plaid couch. "Commonly known as the Bohemian Waxwing. That young man is named Captain Boogie. The Bohemian Waxwing is native to the far northern parts of the United States and up into Canada. Parts of Europe, too. Yes, there are European Bohemian Waxwings. Feeds on fruit mostly, and some insects. Apples are his favorite.”

Trixie gives her an encouraging smile. Tammie makes a surprised sound and she glides past Katya to stand on the other side of the cage.

“Beautiful birds! The Bohemian Waxwings are migratory. Nope, sorry, they don’t stay in town for Christmas. The Cedar Waxwings are the only waxwings that can be found in Western New York year-round. Everyone gets upset when the Bohemians go away, but the Cedar Waxwings are also very beautiful. Oh, look at his eyes, so full of curiosity, like a child’s.”

"Does Captain Boogie talk?" Trixie asks. Tammie laughs and shakes her head. The tubby bird tilts his head back and forth but sits quietly on his hanging perch, neither chirping nor singing.

"Waxwings aren't talkie birds. But they do have as much character as any parrot or parakeet. My grandmother, may she rest in peace, had a front lawn full of sleeping drunk waxwings one summer. The birdies gorged themselves on Pyracantha and Mountain Ash berries that fermented. We brought them all into the shed in shoe boxes filled with soft cloth, so no predators would eat them. That would’ve been very bloody. It took a while for them to wake up and get over their hangovers. Mhm. And then they all flew back to the Pyracantha to eat berries again.”

Katya finds her storytelling delightful, but a lesson on birds isn't why they came here. She pulls her notebook out of her shoulder bag, a signal to Trixie to wrap this up. Tammie gets it instead.

“Well," Tammie sighs. "They are a treat, a present, it is a joy, to watch them, so smooth flying up and down. They seem weightless. It is just magnificent. Captain Boogie can’t fly anymore, but he can hobble, and that’s the real beauty to him. That he tries. That he makes do.”

"How'd you come up with his name?" Trixie asks, deaf to Katya sucking loudly on her teeth and tapping her foot from her place by the gramophone.

She wishes this was Trixie getting back at her for losing her temper, but she knows Trixie wouldn't ever do something like that, she knows that this is her letting a stranger drag something on and on because of her inhuman level of patience with people.

"The name of my daughter's imaginary friend," Tammie replies. She wiggles her fingers at Trixie, who is standing closer to the birdcage. “You want to poke your finger into the cage."

Trixie’s eyes bug and she holds up her palms. “No, uh—"

“Go on. Go ahead. That’s right. Get it out of the way while we’re young.”

Tammie waits for her to do it, so Trixie obliges her, sliding her finger slowly between the metal bars and into Captain Boogie’s domain. Katya's stupified and watches on in wonder and confusion. Captain Boogie makes a swift lunge for Trixie, bringing his beak down onto her knuckle.

Trixie pulls back her finger with a yowl and Katya dashes across the room to stand before her. She takes hold of Trixie's wrist and inspects her hand; the bird’s bite has broken the skin and a thin dribble of blood runs down her arm. Trixie lets her bones be pliant in Katya's gentle grip. She looks between Katya and Tammie in disbelief.

Katya glowers at the woman. “Tammie, why did you say it was safe to do that?”

Tammie laughs. “I didn't! But your friend just swore a blood oath with him. He can trust her forever. He’ll never hurt her again. Come into the kitchen with me, Trixie. I’ll patch you up.”

Trixie stands unmoving, blinking at Tammie in puzzled silence before a small, bemused smile crosses her face and she nods, follows the woman into the kitchen. Katya lets out a sigh of relief, suddenly glad for Trixie’s _inhuman level of patience_. She flops down on the plaid couch and shrugs out of her blazer. It's warmer than room temperature in here and she figures this might take a while.

 

 

Trixie’s finger is bandaged, not in a simple Band-Aid that would have been suffice, but in tubular gauze. She keeps twisting her wrist to survey it, wounded finger poised in the air. Katya leans over and kisses it. The scratch of rough gauze tickles her top lip and Katya swipes a finger over her mouth to overlay the sensation. Trixie watches her the entire time, amused, before she gazes back down at her finger with newfound interest.

The kettle had whistled while Tammie was monologuing and they've since been waiting on the couch. She comes back carrying a wooden tray with two ceramic mugs. They’re lumpy and colorful, handmade and hand-painted. Katya takes the purple one and Trixie its pink fraternal twin.

Tammie sits down in a wingback armchair across from them. “My heart goes out to you, Katya. My daughter went missing on her fourth birthday. Yes, she was stolen away.”

“I’m so sorry,” Katya says. She pauses her hedonistic scooping of sugar to make sure Tammie knows she's being real with her. Tammie nods sadly. Trixie looks devastated. Guilty, even. Katya thinks back to the comment about an imaginary friend, the cake plate and balloons in the kitchen.

“Never found her. That was many years ago. One, two, three, four, five, six, seven, eight, nine. Nine years. How long has your sister been missing?”

“Three years,” Katya passes the sugar cup to Trixie, who sprinkles almost nothing into her mug. “But she wasn’t taken.”

“How do you know? Did she tell you she was going to disappear? She sounds like a magician.”

Trixie sets her mug down on the coffee table in front of them after one sip. “There’s reason to believe she just ran away.”

“There isn’t any reason to it,” Tammie snaps, hands waving in the air. “One day your girl is here, the next she’s gone. I have cookies. Chocolate chip and butterscotch.”

Katya is thrown by the subject change and almost spills her tea on her blouse. “Butterscotch for me, please.”

“Chocolate chip,” Trixie says. “Thank you.”

Tammie leaves them alone again. Katya starts downing the tea. It's scorching hot and tastes funny, but it gives her something to do with her hands and mouth. Trixie seems to be eyeing the quiet bird where the cage stands just behind Tammie's chair.

“What do you make of this?” Trixie whispers, leaning towards her. “It was a while ago that Svetlana was here, right? Whatever she has to tell us could be misremembered. Or just plain wrong.”

“We've been here this long. Let’s hear her out,” Katya suggests. "And don't provoke her to go off on a tangent about God knows what. She likes that you're a listener."

They break away when Tammie returns with a plate stacked high with cookies. Katya pulls a tape recorder out of her bag and raises it up, Tammie _Mhms_ her agreement. Katya sets it on the table and clicks record before she selects one cookie for herself.

She breaks off a piece and pops it into her mouth daintily while Trixie shoves a whole cookie between her lips and picks up another to repeat the process. She's taking Katya's request to the extreme, but it's working, because Tammie's focus is all on Katya.

“You said on the phone my sister said funny things to you?” Katya asks, shielding her chewing mouth with her free hand before she swallows and sucks the crumbs off of her thumb. 

“Yes, she did. She said to me—” Tammie clears her throat and straightens in her seat. She raises her hands up past her head and gazes back and forth between her palms. “I know...Not these my hands...And yet I think there was...A woman like me once had hands...Like these.”

Trixie’s jaw is frozen mid-chew. “What?”

“It’s a poem,” Katya answers. Her stomach sinks with the implication. Tammie hums and lowers her hands down to her lap.

“That is correct, Katya. It is a poem by Adelaide Crapsey, inventor of the cinquain form. I went to a librarian confidant of mine to find that out. I don’t believe your Svetlana speaks much English beyond that poem. Just enough to get by. But she understands it well! Does this make your search harder?”

Trixie's swallow is audible. She drops her cookie back onto the plate with a loud _clink!_ , then drops her elbow onto her chair's armrest. Out of the corner of her eye, Katya sees her holding her head up in her hand, but Katya's preoccupied with staring down at the colorful patterns of the rug underneath her.

The room is closing in and it's a familiar feeling. She's in her father's study again. She can smell her uncle's terrible cologne.

“How is she running around like that? And why didn’t we know this before, Katya? Why the hell didn’t Alexei say anything?”

“They really don’t want us to find her,” Katya murmurs, more to herself than in response to Trixie’s questions. A warm hand clamps over hers on the armrest, rough gauze scratching her skin.

Tammie shoots up to her feet. “Don’t squash your hope down yet! Get up off that sofa, girls. I have more to reveal to you. Yes, I do. Word of warning, it may be... Upsetting, if your reactions are any indication.”

Katya's head is slow to rise up, but she sees Tammie shimmy in place before traipsing away and disappearing behind a grey door she hadn't noticed earlier. Trixie passes her a look that says _We can leave if you want._ Katya mouths a _No_ and Trixie stands, offers Katya her hand to lift her up.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> a good portion of tammie's dialogue on the waxwings was lifted from youtube comments from videos on waxwings and from educational websites. i'm by no means a bird expert, just an enthusiast. i also can't take credit for "captain boogie". that's the name of my friend's four-year-old son's roblox character and i just think that's the greatest thing ever.
> 
> [here is the ever-shifting playlist for those who dig that sort of thing.](https://open.spotify.com/user/werewolvse/playlist/7ChhK0gzEqhLMMhy0PDqHF?si=dYbvLYS9QJS6ROOe5wCynw) thank you again to the anon who sent me song recs. i really liked the vampire weekend song in particular. i didn't include them on the playlist, but i want you to know i appreciate the enthusiasm, that you like my work enough to send me an ask about songs for it. that was lovely of you :)


	4. Her Mother's Coat

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Katya stares at Trixie, unable to shake the loss of words that's settled in deep since Tammie dropped the first bomb on her. She wonders, of all times to, what kind of woman is the kind Trixie falls in love with.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> and we're back!
> 
> there is a flashback scene in this chapter, but it is not unlike the two previous, although smaller flashbacks, as in it's all in past tense. shouldn't be confusing. enjoy!
> 
> update: thank you so much to @rootcellars for creating such a beautiful piece of artwork in response to this chapter. you captured the scenery beautifully, and with so much detail, and i am in awe of your artistic interpretation. i am content to sit and stare at it forever. nobody's ever drawn fanart for a work of mine before and i'm so happy that it was you who decided to be the first. you are so talented bro!

* * *

The study they've followed Tammie into is a shoebox of a room. The furniture is sparse, consisting of a wooden desk and matching chair. More bird decorations adorn the flower and tree twig pattern wallpaper, but these ones are real birds, stuffed and mounted.

Katya peers up at the small plaques underneath the deceased from her place beside the woman. The gold bars serve as epitaphs; a Tufted Titmouse died of electrocution, a Northern Cardinal died of a BB gun wound, a feral cat killed a Black-capped Chickadee, and a Downy Woodpecker flew into a neighbor's window.

"Did you do all this taxidermy yourself?" Katya asks. A pet bird holds none of her interest, but dead ones made to look like pets pique it. She owns a roadkill hat and childishly wants to tell Tammie the name she gave to the old thing.

In contrast, Trixie is cupping her injured hand to her chest, resembling Tippi Hedren anticipating another attack as her horrified eyes dart around the walls. She's rooted to a spot by the single window in the room. The street lights reflect off the snow and all is glowing and peaceful outside.

"What? Oh, yes," Tammie replies. She's busy flipping through a big black ledger on the desk. "Birds shouldn't be put in the ground to rest. That's the opposite of their nature. There are countless more of them in the garage. My neighbors will hit a bird with their car, but won't take the mount I made them. I don't ask for money. I ask that they own up to their mistakes."

"I'm sorry you have to deal with that," Katya says. She goes to Trixie's side when she remains silent and encourages her to lean down with a tug on her shirt sleeve. "You can excuse yourself. I'll be fine," she whispers. She nods her head to reinforce this, but Trixie shakes hers.

"Kids, come over here, I've almost found the day she came by.”

They’re both almost thirty-years-old, but neither complains. Tammie waves her hand above the ledger in a sweeping gesture.

“I record everything bought and sold in books. I don’t trust computers. Ricardo who works at the store tells me he can set one up, but I don't trust them and I never will. Here we are!" she’s flipped back to a page as she was talking and she runs her finger across skinny lines of text. “October 29th. She bought a 1976 medieval diptych replica. Paid in cash. $35."

There is a large chunk of text underneath the monetary record. Katya points to it, but Tammie starts speaking before she can ask.

“I write detailed observations on the people who come to my store, in case of a situation like this one, the one we are in right now, together. But I had expected it to be the police looking for answers, not lesbians. I’m not always right.”

Tammie returns to the contents of the book and adjusts the gold wire-rimmed reading glasses she's put on since entering the study.

“40-ish-year-old woman by the name of Svetlana. Carried a big cardboard box in. No struggle for her, she's a strong woman. Plaid scarf tied around her hair. How Pilgrim-y, but stylish, too."

She takes a breath to continue and it feels like she's taking it right out of Katya's lungs.

"Muddy blonde hair with white blonde streaks. Dye-job? Curly, curly, curly, falling in her face. Pale skin. Rouge on her cheeks. Black circles for sunglasses. Never took them off. Colorful patchwork jacket buttoned up to her neck. Collar up. Green corduroy capris. Yellow mittens. Brown leather work shoes. Red socks. Storybook character comes to life.”

Tammie smiles at Katya, who is blinking without pause to keep from crying. The smile falls and she takes Katya's hand, strokes and pats it. Her fingers are warm and wrinkly.

“She sold me quite a few things. I can copy all that down for you. It saddens me to relay this, but she sold family heirlooms. Yes, without a doubt. I could give you the information the buyers gave me if you want to track them down? Most are professional collectors, funny men who tuck their t-shirts into their shorts in the summer.”

Katya struggles to say anything for a couple seconds and she shakes her head. “I don’t... I don't think whoever bought those could help us.”

“I’ll give all the info to you anyway. You never know. But I do have one thing of value that she sold left.”

Tammie lets go of her hand and slides her own into a pocket on her vest. She pulls out a small purple velvet jewelry box. 

“This," she says, upon opening the box to reveal a silver locket. It's shiny, well-taken-care-of, and it glints in the yellow overhead light. "I couldn’t sell this. It was the only thing she looked upset about. I thought she’d come back the next day to retrieve it. But no. No, she did not. I still have a couple of tin tobacco signs she sold too, but they're worthless. I think she picked them up from a crap shop, somewhere.”

Tammie passes the box over to Katya, who takes out the locket. A swirl of blonde hair is enclosed behind glass on one side and the other half of the silver heart is a faded sepia-tone portrait of a woman. She looks like a much older and more rustic Svetlana.

“Oh. Is this… Is this her mother?” Katya asks. The file on Svetlana doesn’t have any pictures of her mother Ludmila. Her name is only found on Svetlana’s birth certificate. Katya feels Trixie’s hands on her shoulders and it registers that her voice is shaking. Her body is too. “Did she say?”

Tammie tuts through a frown. “No. But what else would it be? Your gut is smart, Katya. Give it a listen. And take that, it is all yours now. Property of Y.O.U., sweetie.”

“Thank you,” Katya whispers. She clutches the locket's chain necklace between her shaking fingers. Her hands freeze when a thought crosses her mind. “What did she sound like?”

“Oh. She was very soft-spoken and polite. Yes, a charming lady, like yourself. Heavy accent, much heavier than yours. You sound… Yours is mixed, whereas hers was one hundred percent Eastern European. Is it Boston you immigrated to? Sounds like it!”

Tammie waits until Katya manages to croak out a yes.

“Well, she was a little out of place, a little weird. In space. What’s it the kids are saying? A space cadet. Maybe she was just tired, her eyes were hidden, I couldn’t tell for sure. She was very sweet. Her delivery of that poem was delightful. Maybe she's a poet! In her own language, of course.”

Katya breathes in and out slowly through her nose. Tammie smiles again in sympathy and starts cleaning up her desk. Trixie's hands remain on her shoulders, easing the tightness in her muscles with gentle kneading. An explosion is building underneath her ribs. Drums are beating in her ears. She focuses on breathing.

“Thanks, Tammie. You've been a big help,” Trixie says, once Katya's calmed down and put the locket back into its box. Tammie hums again and offers to walk them out. Katya lurches forward and hugs her, inducing a noise of surprise, but the woman embraces her and gives Katya's cheeks air kisses. Trixie has to bend down for her to do the same.

After they put on their boots and coats Tammie's guiding them out the door. She stops suddenly, excuses herself and hurries down the hall and into the living room. She returns with one of her fists curled and held to her chest.

“Take this too,” Tammie brings her hand down to Katya’s palm and places a miniature ceramic orca whale couple on it. “For safe travels together. You girls are a pod of two. Stay kind to one another, please. The world is lonely on your own. Thank you for coming, goodbye.”

 

 

They sit in the car in the quiet for a while, outside Tammie's house, snow falling in the night that blankets them. Trixie's been holding Katya's hand over the console, watching her from the driver's seat. Katya hadn't started crying as they both predicted she would, but she feels the need to hardening in her chest and swelling in her belly, ready to burst out of her at any second.

“You know,” Trixie says. She begins to smile down at Katya's hand then up at her. “She kinda reminds me of Auntie Hilda. Svetlana, I mean. The way Tammie described her. The women in your family, Katya. They're something else.”

Katya stares at Trixie, unable to shake the loss of words that's settled in deep since Tammie dropped the first bomb on her. She wonders, of all times to, what kind of woman is the kind Trixie falls in love with. It's been on her mind before. Trixie's girlfriends have always been such different people, the singularity being post-breakup they all want to stay friends with her, so it's hard to decipher.

Trixie can't even determine the answer herself, so the unfulfilling one Katya's long ago come up with for the both of them is that she just cares about women.

Katya cares about Trixie. She doesn't want this night to get any heavier on her best friend's shoulders, so she holds back whatever wants to come out right now. Trixie rubs a thumb over her knuckles and Katya breathes out a sigh. She puts on a happy face.

"Yeah. Yeah, they are."

 

 

Uncle Alexei married Hilda when Katya was six.

On the day of the wedding, her father had been in the study all day, on the pretense of doing work that could not be delayed. In truth, he was pouting over not being chosen as his brother's best man. Her mother, too nervous to ever drive, had resigned early on to being late and was smoking in the kitchen. Katya watched TV in the living room.

"Lyosha and his mad bride can wait. So can you. We won't miss anything of note," her father said, upon Katya questioning him not for the first time. "Tell mama to smoke outside. I can't breathe. And stop pulling on your tie."

They had missed everything but the dancing by the time they arrived.

Katya had never seen Hilda before in her life until she watched the woman being twirled around by her father, a man much shorter than Katya’s own and with kinder eyes.

The song they danced to was a folky German one. Katya couldn’t understand a word of it and the music itself grated her ears, but when Hilda and her father broke apart and begun slapping their shoes behind their backs and in front up by their hips, she decided it was her new favorite song.

Hilda wasn’t wearing high heels, but light brown boots with wooden heels, clog-like. Her wedding dress was lilac and made of smooth satin, with sleeves that reminded Katya of the pants Barbara Eden wore on _I Dream of Jeannie_. The fashion choice put all eyes on her.

As Katya looked around the fancy, wood-paneled clubhouse, she saw that most of the eyes were unkind. Hilda didn’t care.

She was a short woman, almost girlish in her figure. Katya had wondered how young she was and if she could’ve been her older sister. Her makeup made her look far more womanly in the face though, with thick black eye makeup and heavy pink blush. Her lips were bright red and shiny and they caught the yellow lights. Not at all the kind of face her mother ever painted on.

Hilda’s hair was reddish brown, with a chunky fringe that was parted down the middle, a style that was alien then but would come into fashion by the time she was still sporting it when Katya grew into a teenager. It was almost unruly. Katya wanted hair just like it. She still had her veil on, though with the sheer fabric thrown back, fluttering behind her with every graceful movement she made in time with her father.

Katya wondered what her own father meant by her being mad. Hilda seemed so joyous, more than she had ever seen a person be joyous before, full of energy and smiling wide, toothy and playful.

After all the dances and the speeches, Uncle Alexei’s young bride approached Katya’s table. Pytor had hauled his brother away for drinking and Katya’s mother had long ago abandoned her to chat with the ladies she had weekly tea with. Katya was left alone to speak to the stranger.

“Hello,” the woman said. Her voice was babyish and her accent was heavy but sweet. She crouched down to be at level with Katya and folded her arms on the table to rest her head. “I’m your new aunt, Hilda. It’s so lovely to finally meet you.”

Katya was a wild child, but shy at times, and she turned her head to stare at her uneaten piece of vanilla cake. Hilda poked her finger in the cream frosting and Katya’s eyes followed the movement until the woman dabbed a glob onto the tip of her own nose. Katya laughed and mimicked her by slathering two streaks of frosting on either of her own cheeks.

Hilda laughed too, a sweet musical sound, and reached up into her hair to pull off her veil. She placed it on top of Katya’s head and drew the sheer fabric over her face. Only Hilda was privy to Katya’s surprised but delighted grin. She'd never worn anything made for a woman that wasn't in secret. Her mother often wondered aloud why she ran out of makeup so fast.

The veil smelled pretty. That's the only word Katya has to remember the scent by, this was so long ago. Hilda always smelled pretty, like the earth. The wedding should've been outdoors. The reception should have been, at the very least; Hilda deserved more than that and certainly more than Uncle Alexei as a husband.

Hilda tucked her long hair back behind her big ears. She had on silver earrings that hugged her earlobes tightly and the metal shined in Boston's summer sun that came in through the big windows. The earrings were so simple compared to the enormous diamond ring on her slim finger. Katya thought the earrings were more beautiful, they were more _Hilda_ , if Katya had learned anything about her in under an hour.

“I hope we’ll be friends,” Hilda said to her, in earnest, as if a child’s opinion of her meant the entire world.

Looking back, she absolutely had meant it. To Katya’s current knowledge, her aunt never made any friends in Boston, she only ever spoke and showed photographs of old ones she had back in Laufenburg, and she hardly ever left her adopted home. For all intents and purposes, she had been a lonely old spinster who was trapped in a young married woman’s body.

Katya clutched the veil’s fabric in her tiny hands to throw it up out of her eyes.

“We will be, Aunt Hilda!”

 

 

"She was getting rid of her ties to the family," Katya says.

She's sitting on the edge of the hotel bed with Trixie reclined behind her. They stopped in Cleveland last night and came back from dinner at some dive an hour ago. Katya conceded to taking a break for a day, even though their scheduled days of rest are due after Cincinnati, given what happened in Buffalo.

They've been watching _The Simpsons_. Or, Trixie has been watching. Katya's been in her head, moving on from thoughts of Aunt Hilda to replaying everything Tammie said over and over again.

Katya blinks hard once and focuses on what's in front of her before her brain superimposes Svetlana's face onto Aunt Hilda's. The TV screen crackles in the middle every so often and the image is fuzzy, the sound staticy. Trixie bumps her foot against Katya's hip in acknowledgment.

"Huh. But Pete kept her in the inheritance. Your mom, too. Why?"

Katya turns around and crawls up the bed to sit beside her. The room is cold, even colder after they thought they'd fixed the AC, so she put one of her coats on over one of Trixie's worn-in flannel shirts. A pair of wool socks keeps her toes warm. Trixie already showered and she's in her usual nightwear, plus a bathrobe. Katya couldn't be bothered to wipe her makeup off her face, let alone wash her whole body.

She's never felt so tired in her entire life. Never so mentally wound-up either. She's going to age ten years before it's springtime.

"So he could be the good guy. In case either of them ever come back," Katya answers. Trixie chews on her lip and looks past her, at the television, and turns it off with the remote. Katya collapses on top of her with an exhausted groan.

Her hands curl up the material of Trixie's robe just below her armpits and it's softer than the first hotel's, plush, warm from body heat. Trixie’s arms are wrapped around her, hands joining at her back. She brushes her lips over the top of Katya’s head and gives her a kiss through her hair.

She gives another when Katya rubs her head against her mouth and continues on before stopping without warning.

“Please keep going,” Katya mumbles. She headbutts her chin to reinforce the request. Trixie complies but stops again all too soon.

“Sorry, my lips are goin' numb.”

Katya lifts her head and looks at her through her falling strands of hair. Trixie is smiling, her chin pressing into her neck. Katya brings a hand up to Trixie's lips and runs her fingers over them. She tugs on her bottom one to make her huff a laugh through her nose. Katya moves her fingers down her chin, across the soft rolls of fat that go into her neck in her position.

“Hey,” Trixie stills her by the wrist. “Would you put some makeup on me?”

“Really? You never wanted to when we were little.”

She shrugs. Katya leaves the bed to grab her makeup bag and hand mirror from the bathroom and she sits on Trixie's stomach and bends down to apply the same products she used today onto her. It's unlike doing it for other friends, who talk the entire time and blink too much and don't stop moving their head. Trixie is quiet and does what Katya asks. It's not too different from doing anything else with her.

Katya tries to keep her hand steady when drawing on the lipstick but she still slips up and smears some on the corner of her lip. She wets her thumb and wipes the mark off into a faded pink and tries again. Her fingers aren't ever calm when she needs them to be.

"I look pretty, right?" Trixie says. It sounds more like she's reassuring Katya than herself. Trixie's eyelids are shimmery white and her cheeks appear rounder with a powdery blush on them. Her eyelashes are already long, cow-like, and Katya didn't bother to curl them or swipe mascara on. The red on her lips is the real shocker, making her mouth unrecognizable, even if its the way Katya does her own.

“Very pretty," Katya confirms. She sits back and admires her work. "We should go back out on the town like this.”

“You take yours off. We’ll trade places. You’d be a handsome butch," Trixie pokes her tongue out between her teeth— she's delighted, imagining the sight. Katya gently pulls on her short hair.

“You be me and I’ll be you? I’ve dreamt about that before.”

"I dream about you all the time."

Katya grins down at her and starts playing with her hair, styling it as much as possible with a crew cut, then scratching over her scalp until she remembers what they were doing. She reaches over to select her hand mirror and she holds it up to Trixie, who hardly glances at her reflection.

“Aren’t you going to look at yourself?” Katya waves the mirror with impatience that is quick to morph into amusement. Trixie shakes her head. Katya rolls her eyes. "Then what was the point, silly?"

"Something fun for you to do," Trixie says. It pinches Katya's heart and she sets the mirror back down onto the bed with a sigh. Trixie brings her hands up to run them up and down the wool sleeves of Katya's coat. Her mother's coat.

In another life, Katya thinks it would’ve been passed down to Svetlana first. But in this life, they do not share the same mother and hers didn't know of Svetlana. _Doesn't_ know. It's easy to forget that the woman isn't actually dead after all these years of no contact.

She wonders what her mother would make of all of this, from her refuge in Canada, grandmother's house, where she ran away to years ago after she couldn't _Take it anymore!_ Katya wonders if she would love Svetlana. She knows the answer, but she can pretend she doesn't. Hilda would've loved her.

"What are you thinking about?" Trixie asks. Katya draws a finger down the bridge of Trixie's nose before she tucks her hands into her coat pockets.

"I'm thinking about something that would make me feel guilty if I voiced it."

Trixie moves her hands to hold her hips. Katya shifts on top of Trixie to make herself more comfortable on her stomach that is rising and falling in slow motions.

"Why?" she asks, in the same tone. Not petulant, but concerned. She's frowning. The bright red accentuates her pout.

"Because I'm already putting too much pressure on you."

"You're not making me do anything I don't want to do," she's grinning this time. She must expect Katya to say she wants to see her in makeup more. "What is it, honey?"

"I'm thinking about the women in my life," Katya says. She swallows down the frog in her throat. Trixie's expression melts back into a frowning one. "And how you're the only one who's loved me enough to stay with me."

Trixie sits up before Katya can slump over and holds her up in a hug. She's crying before Katya can even start to herself.

"Katya," Trixie breathes. Katya squeezes her tight as she speaks into her unwashed hair. "Your mother loved you. Your aunt loved you. Svetlana, she would love you."

"They all left me!" Katya protests through her tears. She digs her fingers into Trixie's shoulder blades, into the muscle and fat there. "Even my father... He gave up on his health so he could get away from me. They all wanted away from me. I must be so awful, I must be a demon, their devil child, they hated me."

Trixie pulls back from her and cradles Katya's face. Her dark brown eyes are shining and red and her cheeks are wet. She sniffs hard, sucking up the snot threatening to slip down her lips. Her makeup is ruining fast. Katya can feel her own going to shit, already run-down from the day's sweat and currently crusting up in her eyes.

"Fuck Pete," Trixie says. Katya's lips part and her eyes bug, total surprise washing over her. "Fuck Pete. Alright? But he did love you. You've been very loved by your family, Katya. They got caught up in their messes and that's their problem. You didn't do anything bad. You understand me? You're good. You're a sweet angel."

Katya nods then hangs her head as she sobs. Trixie holds her up in her warm palms. This is the first time she's cried about her father being dead. The day he died Trixie took her out for a nice dinner and let her sleep at her place, but that was the extent of comfort needed.

"You're an angel," Trixie repeats in a whisper, once Katya quiets down into sniffles.

"From hell," Katya adds, too late to be funny. Trixie laughs anyway.

"That's my girl," Trixie kisses her forehead but she's quick to turn sheepish about it. "Oh, I got some lipstick on you."

Trixie licks her thumb and bunches up her robe sleeve to wipe Katya's forehead. The plush fabric rubs against her nose and eyebrows and Katya closes her eyes, sinks into a warm pit that feels like a soft bed after a long day.

And though the days are long, the bed they're on isn't close to being comfortable, with its scratchy sheets and springs. Trixie cleans up the rest of Katya's face as best as she can without a wipe. Katya is fresh out of them.

She opens her eyes when she realizes belatedly that the sleeve is gone from her skin and Trixie is there, tired, cried-out, but as kind as always. She's wiped her own face as well, makeup on and around her nose and eyes all smudged. Still pretty. More-so, as Trixie's real face is peeking out from the painted one. The lipstick is giving way to the natural dark pink of her mouth. There's some red on her two small teeth.

"Would it be alright," Katya starts, then stops, not even sure herself what she wants. She brings her fingers up to her forehead then runs a hand through her hair. "Could you, could I—?"

"Yeah," Trixie says. Katya chokes through a short laugh and nudges her back by her shoulder, but she comes back closer. Katya shivers. The room is ice cold. Trixie begins buttoning up her coat for her.

"You don't even know what I'm trying to say," Katya mutters, exasperated. She watches big hands ascend up her chest button by button to lift her head up by the chin.

"I do. And even if I didn't, it wouldn't matter to me. Not if you needed something."

Her ability to be this intense about anything at the drop of a hat never fails to make Katya's heart swing.

"That's your problem, Trixie. You always do anything for me."

"Is it a problem?" Trixie's playing with the coat collar. Her knuckles have soft hairs and the skin is dry from the cold. "If I've always wanted to?"

The way she says it has Katya tripping up over what she means and she wraps her hands around Trixie's, stilling them, how she likes to do. Trixie's looking at her in the way Katya imagines she looks at other women. How Katya looks at other women. She wonders what her own face looks like.

"Can I kiss you?" Trixie says. Katya nods, but Trixie just smiles. "Is that what you were going to ask me?"

"Oh," Katya breathes. She's blushing and stares at the spot between Trixie's bushy brown eyebrows, but there's a faint freckle there and it's too much. Katya shuts her eyes. "Yes."

A thick thumb brushes over one of her eyelids and Katya opens them. Trixie's looking at her mouth and it makes Katya's lips twitch. She leans forward and Trixie mimics her, but moves no further, waiting for her, always waiting, and something in her gut coils and she leans back.

"Well, I don't want to do it now!" Katya says, and Trixie is already laughing gently. "It's too serious. God, I feel like a fourteen-year-old."

"It is not _too serious_ ," Trixie is saying, sounding fourteen herself, but Katya is getting up off of her. Trixie catches her, brings her down to the bed in an embrace that she could break out of if she was genuinely attempting to get away. It is when her coat starts to feel too stuffy that she decides to squirm out of the lazy grip.

She sits facing the TV while she's undoing the buttons. Trixie is giggling. Katya shoots her a look over her shoulder before she turns around to prop her arms up on either side of her where she lays and Katya kisses her, feels the surprised noise released against her lips more than she hears it.

Trixie's lips are waxy. It feels like she's kissing herself, or perhaps it is just the makeup, and that Trixie knows her better than she knows herself, knows from hearing her complaints about failed dates and from exploratory nights when they were younger that she likes to be kissed delicately and held like a doll.

Two fingers come up to rub one of her earlobes and Katya releases the tension in her arms to lie flat against Trixie, against her soft stomach and squishy little breasts, features so familiar to her that it's ridiculous to be suddenly so conscious of them. Trixie is a giving kisser, Katya remembers it all, and she doesn't take too much, doesn't slip her tongue between Trixie's crooked teeth or nip at her lips.

It's chaste. All she needs is the affection. She pulls back for a breath and rests her cheek against Trixie's for a moment, to feel how her breathing is heavier underneath her, before shuffling over to lie beside her. Trixie drapes an arm over her back. 

"Thank you," Katya whispers. Trixie looks like she's already dreaming. Katya doesn't move to get under the blankets until she's sure she is sound asleep. 

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> confession, i've imagined kate bush as aunt hilda since the beginning (the description of her in this chapter should sync up with that...) and i can't deny the link between listening to cloudbusting on endless repeat and being able to get back into this. that and wuthering heights.
> 
> anyway, thanks for reading!


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